Over the weekend, major mainstream social media platforms either suspended or permanently banned the social media handles of President Donald Trump following his inciting comments that led his supporters to invade the US Capitol. Now, the world watches the next move of Trump and what platform he would adopt to reach his millions of followers, NBC Miami writes.
Following accusations of censorship by the conservatives, President Trump and his family and other leading Republican members had moved to Parler, the alternative social media platform favored by far-right groups. Trump had urged his millions of followers to do the same, and true to word, the app became a haven for far-right elements to express their views without restraint and moderation.
Trump and his supporters may have to find another channel for their views as Google Play Store and Apple App Store recently removed the app from their platforms, citing disturbing and upsetting rhetoric going on on the platform. Amazon also expunged the app from its web hosting service on Sunday.
Parler’s CEO John Matze said Amazon’s actions would cause its services to be offline for at least a week. It is expected that Parler would find another web hosting service very soon. However, it would be difficult for the app to keep up with the mainstream success that it enjoyed this past year without two leading platforms such as the App Store and the Play Store.
According to Parler, over 12 million users are registered on its platform. However, research by Sensor Tower places the total number of users all over the world at 10 million, with 8 million users from the US alone.
Matze was defiant in response. While decrying what he called a coordinated attack on his service, he emphasized that tech giants were all out to stamp out the competition that Parler has become following its overwhelming success in just two years of operation. Matze insists the company surprised naysayers in achieving success at a very fast pace hence the fears by the big dogs in the industry, the Washington Post reports.
While speaking on Fox News Channel, Matze said almost everybody distanced themselves from the service, all at the same time, including vendors, text message services, email providers, and their attorneys. He said that the company was trying to get back on its feet, including rebuilding from the scratch. Matze noted that the company had been having difficulties talking with vendors, with many of them saying that they can’t work with his service if Apple and Google are not on board.
Even though Parler can be downloaded from third-party sources, it won’t give the service the reach it desires, with the non-availability of Google and Apple, whose platform drives the accessibility of apps for millions of smartphones all over the world. The loss of web hosting by Amazon Web Services was another huge blow to the service, decimating its operations to a very large extent.
Like the smart businessman that he is, there are talks that Trump may launch his own platform. However, even that move would take some time to build.
Social media giants, especially Facebook and Twitter began to take moderation on their platforms seriously during the early stages of the pandemic period when anti-maskers began urging the public to disregard the use of masks. The US elections made moderation on these platforms very necessary following the antics of Trump and his supporters asserting widespread voter fraud and irregularities.
Source: nbcmiami.com
